SEVENTEEN
A week later, the Unseelie king returned from yet another journey.
Cerwin grudgingly informed me that he’d been seeing to important matters by the eastern warded border and tending to those in need.
I believed he’d spoken true. His stiff stance and the reluctance to tell me anything else confirmed as much. But I also knew there’d been far more to it than that, especially since Vane had left before dawn without a word.
I’d woken to find Meadow curled around my feet and the king’s book gone. He’d put it back in his nightstand. I hadn’t expected to be notified, but I certainly hadn’t expected him to leave right after he’d just returned.
So naturally, when I caught wind of his arrival, I floated throughout the halls until I heard his voice from a room I’d learned was his study.
Meadow found me moments after I’d found the king, greeting me with a purr I feared would be heard through the thick wood of the door. I made to leave, not entirely sure why I cared to lay eyes on him anyway.
But Vane wasn’t alone.
A feminine voice neared the door, and I caught her frustrated words. “They’re now hunting for information. If we don’t move the mountain units, they’ll succeed in more captures.”
“Let them,” Vane said.
“Neerin hasn’t been seen since the last push. If you think they’ll let him or anyone else live, then—”
“I don’t,” Vane growled. “We wouldn’t either. But we must keep them chasing their tails while we finish preparations.”
Silence dripped before whoever it was moved away from the door, and their voices lowered to murmurs.
Meadow twined around my legs, tangling in my skirts. She flopped to her back, pawing at them and tearing a strip of lace at the hem.
I crouched to free her, and ignored the growled hiss of disapproval as I nudged her down the hall.
Straightening, I caught the end of a different female’s words, assuming she must have been pacing or moving throughout the study. “… Lord’s update to finalize preparations.”
“Tell him I wish to see him,” Vane said. “Tomorrow evening.”
Then the door opened.
I froze, blinking as if momentarily blinded.
An incredibly tall and willowy female grinned. The type of grin I’d glimpsed upon my father’s face when he heard pleasing news. “Princess Mildred.” She lowered her head.
The female behind her stepped forward and did the same. She was shorter, her apricot hair curling around high cheeks like wet leaves. Eyes as blue as the deeper depths of the sea widened during an appraisal that caused me to tense. “You are not as human as I thought you’d be.”
My stiff shoulders dropped as my eyes threatened to roll. “Not the first time I’ve heard that.”
She laughed, a crisp burst of breathy sound that made me feel at ease. That is, until she said, “Felinka, commander of His Majesty’s royal armies.” Glancing at her tall companion, she seized her hand. “And this is my wife, Nia.”
Nia’s apple-green gaze narrowed as she added, “High general.”
Felinka smirked. “If you desire a visit with the king, Princess, I must advise waiting.”
Her wife glanced over her shoulder into the study, then whispered, “At least until he’s fucked something or slept.”
Before I could ask why, they both laughed and left me facing the open study door.
Darkness awaited within, the drapes closed. I frowned at the outline of an armchair, unable to see Vane, then at the departing females. Sunlight gilded their brown-and-black leather uniforms, their quiet laughter fluttering down the hall.
Vane now stood in the doorway. His energy made his presence known before his bland question did. “Is there something you need, Mildred?”
Blood muddied his scent. My eyes journeyed from his dirt-caked boots over his fitted leather pants and long-sleeved tunic, inspecting carefully. No sign of injury. I frowned, searching his features. Except for the shadows beneath his eyes, brightening their sky-blue hue, there was nothing.
Nothing, yet his displeasure was detected in the lowering of his brows and in the clenched state of his ticking jaw.
Realizing I’d been staring for far too long, I dredged up a question to which I already knew the answer. “I’ve been hoping to write to my sister,” I said. “Bernadette is likely fretting.”
“If she’s heard of your disappearance from Cloud Castle.”
My stomach sank.
“They’ve hidden it for this long?” It hadn’t been terribly long, but nearly two weeks had passed since that bone brought me here. Plenty of time for word to begin to spread, no matter how tightly contained they tried to keep it.
“Our sources say so, yes.”
“By sources, you mean your shadows.”
A twitch of his lips failed to soften the severity of his ruggedly hewn features. “Believe it or not, my shadows cannot be everywhere.” He scrubbed his jaw, eyes darkening like a cloud moving over the sun. “Or anywhere right now.”
That would explain why I hadn’t seen much of them during his absences. It would drain him of considerable strength to have his shadows vanishing to places to gather intel, and judging by his worn appearance, strength was something he currently lacked.
The urge to ask him what had happened during this longer journey—why he was so drained—knocked at my teeth.
Maybe I imagined it, but I could have sworn his features gentled as he studied me. First, my half-braided hair, then my lavender blouse and matching ruffled skirts, and finally, my bare feet. “You look…” He cleared his throat. “Nice.”
“Nice?” I repeated, feigning mild offense from the simple choice of word, when really, a patter in my stomach had my toes scrunching over the stone.
His eyes narrowed, then seemed to lighten upon my chest.
He wasn’t admiring the swell of my breasts above the gathered neckline of my blouse. No, he could hear my heartbeat. How it raced the longer he watched me.
I looked at the ground, fighting the impulse to flee as an odd feeling of elation and fear quickened each breath. “So…” I lifted my gaze when I was certain my cheeks hadn’t stained. “May I write to Bernadette?”
Vane blinked as if he’d forgotten what I’d asked him mere minutes ago. “Not yet.”
Then he stepped back and closed his study door.
Defiance glimmered within the deep-blue gaze of the male in the largest cage in the dungeon.
A network of cells encircled his, all of them empty.
Something dripped. Something scuttled.
The male seemed eager for me to reach him, the clip of each step spreading his arrogant smile. I took one last whiff of my favorite scarf, then tucked it back in my coat pocket.
In the other pocket, my finger stroked the sharp edge of the small blade.
Just for annoying me, I’d take those eyes first.
I stopped before his cell. “Bring in the lover.”
That defiance leaked from his eyes, rendering them a dull blue as he failed to keep his features from paling. Fear, true and so fucking sweet, emanated from him.
Finally. I loathed dawdling.
As scuffed steps neared, and the female growled at the guards who struggled to contain her, I grinned. “Despite my stellar reputation, I am a male who can be reasoned with.” I snatched the female from the guards and sank the dagger from my pocket into her stomach, stilling her. “To a certain extent.”
Her scream escaped her gritted teeth.
The once-stubborn prisoner dropped to his knees and clung to the bars, uncaring of the iron’s burn. “Karis.”
“I’m fine,” she panted.
I withdrew the dagger, and she fell to the ground with a groan, clutching her stomach.
“Love,” I said, dragging my finger over the bloodied blade. I left the heaving female with the guards and walked closer to my prisoner. “Such a cumbersome curse, is it not?”
“We won’t speak,” the female hissed.
“Oh, well…” I smirked down at her caged lover. “Good thing I haven’t asked you to.”
My prisoner swallowed thickly, then tore his gaze from the female and his hands from the iron bars. A quick nod, likely missed by his love, and I turned to the guards. “Take her to the eastern woods and await my signal before releasing her.”
Her anguish echoed through the dungeon long after she’d been dragged up the stairs. She knew she wouldn’t see the wolf shifter trapped in my cage again.
But he would make sure she lived by tell —
A groan and a splash woke me.
Dotted in sweat and breathing too fast, I clenched the bedding for something tangible.
Just a dream , I told myself.
Just another nightmare that would soon fade into unrecognizable patches.
It had to be nearing midnight, and it seemed the king had finally visited his chambers. Although I’d shared it with him before he’d left, I turned onto my side and scooted closer to the edge of the bed.
But sleep wouldn’t return.
It remained like a stain, glaring in the dark. The dungeon. His voice. All of it so clear as if I’d been a witness to Atakan’s cruelty.
Yet through his own eyes.
It made no sense. It had to be another dream. Except none of my dreams had ever felt quite that real. Never had one stayed with me like a vivid memory rather than haunting pieces.
Meadow mewled when I threw myself onto my back. The felynx crawled from underneath my leg, eyes aglow with unmistakable displeasure for being disturbed.
Another groan slipped through the bathing room door, which King Vane had left ajar.
It was none of my business, whatever he was doing in there. But it wasn’t a groan of pleasure. It was a tight sound, as if he’d wanted to keep it trapped behind clenched teeth.
Again, I tried to ignore him and sleep.
Time crawled by, and I failed. Meadow’s purred snores filled the bedchamber. The longer I lay there, staring up at the chandelier in desperate need of repair, the more certain I became that the blood I’d scented outside of Vane’s study had been his.
Before I could think better of it, I padded across the bedchamber and tapped on the bathing room door. “Are you coming out any time soon?”
No response.
Leaning closer to the candlelit gap, I heard it—snoring.
“Vane,” I called, knocking on the door again.
Still nothing but the sound of his rumbled breaths.
Exhaling heavily, I headed back to bed. It wasn’t my problem. If he wanted to sleep in the bathing pool, then so be it. A relief, really. I’d get the bed all to myself, just as I’d prefer.
But sleep never came. The king never woke, and his snoring soon overpowered Meadow’s. The water was likely freezing.
Not my problem.
A lie.
Whether I liked it or not, this king had made himself my problem. I might not be able to escape a land locked unto itself, but that didn’t mean I wished to stay here forever. Leaving him to wrinkle in a cold body of water wouldn’t exactly endear me to him.
Maybe he’d assume I never woke. Maybe he would think nothing of such callousness. Maybe he’d even expect it due to his opinion of the kingdom I hailed from.
Maybe I was giving it too much thought when it shouldn’t have mattered.
For some reason I couldn’t find, it did matter.
I tossed off the bedding and stomped to the bathing room, the door swinging open with a creak that failed to rouse him.
A candle burned low at the corner ledge of the bathing pool that had been fashioned with his royal ilk and those wings in mind. His formidable form came close to filling the space that could fit four of me. The water covered his manhood, gently wavering against his torso.
Still, I kept my eyes averted as I whispered harshly, “King, wake up.”
He didn’t so much as stir.
I growled, walking two steps closer to the sunken tub. His dark lashes twitched, but his eyes didn’t open.
Then I scented a peppered and milky aroma. Healing salts.
For just a moment, I took the opportunity to stare at those fierce features without him knowing. The strong nose, the tiny scar beneath his right eye, and the perfect arches of his thinner upper lip. His mouth was slightly parted, and for another moment, I wondered if his lower lip was as cushiony as it looked.
I wondered what it might feel like to run my nails over the heavier scruff beneath his regal cheeks while I sampled those lips with my own.
His next snore broke. His eyes opened.
I stepped back, my heart immediately in a panic.
He blinked. His thick brows drooped over cloudy and bloodshot blue eyes. “Mildred?” My name was rasped, confusion soaking it. He looked around the bathing room and groaned, “Fuck.”
“You’ve been in here for a long time. I thought you might be cold.”
He made to straighten and hissed. Pain creased his features.
“You didn’t look injured when I saw you earlier, but I could smell it,” I whispered, unsure why. “The blood.”
“Wing,” he grunted. Bracing both forearms on the pool’s edge, he pushed himself up to sit properly. The tiles creaked, and the water sloshed around his stomach.
But my attention was stolen by a section of ruined feathers in his left wing, close to his back. The blood had been washed away, revealing severed flesh and muscle.
That explained why he’d been in such a mood.
“You’ve been across the borders. Over the wards.” I remembered the fires near Cloud Castle. The hunts and battles. I dared to voice my next assumption. “You’ve been leading the attacks to provoke the Seelie?”
He didn’t answer. I wasn’t sure he needed to.
“Provoke,” he eventually said, and huffed. Then his teeth gnashed. “Fuck these fucking things.”
I peered at his wing once more. Sinew re-stitched. It was both fascinating and utterly disgusting.
And evidently unmercifully painful. The slowest form of torture.
Breath left him in quiet pants between his teeth. Muscle corded in his neck beneath slick strands of his hair and flexed in his arms.
Though I shouldn’t, I lowered beside the bathing pool. I’d woken him, so I should have returned to bed with a clear conscience. But he wasn’t leaving the bathing room until he was in less pain.
His eyes had squeezed shut.
They flashed open when I touched his fingers. Gently, I pried them from the tiled edge and turned his hand over.
He said nothing. A long exhale left him when I laid my hand over his palm. The tips of my fingers reached halfway up his. Marveling at the size difference, I nearly forgot what I was doing until his fingers curled to touch mine.
They retreated a moment later, and I couldn’t look at him. I kept my eyes on his hand and traced the callouses in his palm, the lifelines spreading in large and deep arches.
“How were you going to do it?” The pain-thickened question stilled my fingers. “Survive a court who would rather not have you among them.”
The nicer way of putting how the Seelie Fae felt about me made my lips wriggle. There was little need to withhold an answer or honesty. Although I’d feared for my life since the contract was signed a decade ago, I shrugged. “Whatever it takes.”
“You speak in present tense.”
“My future hasn’t changed, King.”
A low grumble drew my gaze from his hand to his face. His eyes were still murky from the torment of his healing wing but no longer bloodshot. They held mine, almost gently, however that was possible, as he said, “You know that isn’t true, Princess.”
I failed to find a response.
He was right. Regardless of the absurdity of what Vane needed from me, everything would be much different when I left his realm. I would need a new strategy. But strategy required research, and it unnerved me—not having the means to assess much of anything.
After that dream I’d just had, it more than unnerved me. It terrified me so much that I knew in my bones I’d be better off hiding in a ship and sailing across the Moss Sea than learning a new dance with the Ethermore royals.
When the time came, I feared Atakan would no longer wish to duel.
He would only strike.
But maybe I wasn’t entirely without the ability to study my heartless opponent. “Have you heard word of what transpires there?”
As if knowing why I’d asked, Vane’s brows hovered low over his cobalt eyes. “They’ve got their hands full putting out our fires.”
“Indeed,” I said. “I saw some within the mountains.”
My smile fell the more I thought about that.
The more I thought about what this king was doing and what he might hope to achieve. “You want more than freedom from the wards.” A statement rather than a question.
“Even if I didn’t, retribution is required to ensure such malevolence doesn’t happen again.”
As his deep words reverberated in the dark chambers of my heart, I glared at him. After a minute, I stared at the candlelit royal crest in the window. It would be my fault when his warriors, armies of shifters, once again spread across Elaysia.
It would be my fault when other beasts fled the bounds of their habitats to terrorize the continent among those armies and their king.
I couldn’t not say it. “You are freeing a land of monsters.”
“Since their creation, all beasts have flown and prowled freely throughout Elaysia.” He groaned and shifted slightly with a twitch of his wings. “It’s important we remember why that changed.”
His father and mother had been the reason it changed. But putting voice to a truth he already knew was pointless.
The faucet dripped in the stale silence.
He knew what I’d been thinking. “I will admit that I never wholly agreed with my father’s methods. He was obsessive and ruthless. He never deserved my mother, nor did he treat her well. But that doesn’t mean he wasn’t right to seek vengeance for her death.” He let out a rattled exhale. “And it doesn’t mean that revenge isn’t even more necessary now.”
I’d spent most of my life focused on one creature’s battles and well-being—my own. It now seemed such selfishness had delivered me straight into the bloodied hands of this long war.
A war that hadn’t ended at all.
Strange discomfort weighted my limbs. I was rescued from the sickening sensation of spiraling deep down into dark spaces by a touch at my jaw.
Vane traced it with his forefinger, his eyes trailing. Then the shape of my lips. My breathing turned shallow when that finger grazed the curve of my neck. He brushed the dip of my collarbone and sniffed.
My heart faltered. He could scent it.
The advancing heat of arousal.
Glancing away, I placed my hand beneath me to rise. To flee and pretend this never happened.
Heavy warmth folded over my other hand, still beside the bathing pool. “Stay.” A soft command I was about to ignore until the water drained, and he leaned back in the giant tub. His eyes closed—an invitation to escape what had just happened.
One I took, relieved and quietly confused. Wholly aware he could feel my gaze on his features, I stared anyway.
I watched his throat bob as he swallowed. The way his jaw slowly loosened as his wing further healed. I frowned at his lashes, the breadth of his cheekbones. I absorbed his strange and rugged beauty until my head lay against my arm upon the tiled ledge of the pool.
As dawn kissed the sky and my back met softness, my eyes fluttered open. The bed, I realized, Vane’s arms releasing me a moment later.